9/30/26 Report - Thinking About Hoards. A Couple Studies and Some Thoughts. Back to Flat Surf.

 

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.

Viking treasures still hide in plain sight

Norwegian silver find: Four ornate silver bracelets from the 9th century were found under a farmhouse in Norway, likely untouched since their burial.

Hoards across Europe: Famous finds like the Spillings Hoard and Vale of York Hoard reveal the Vikings’ vast trade networks and cultural exchanges.

Burial motives debated: Experts speculate treasures were hidden due to conflict, trade travel, or sudden danger, with many never retrieved by their owners...

Here is that link.

Viking treasures still hiding in plain sight

Historians believe Viking hoards were often buried for safekeeping during times of instability, such as enemy attacks or political upheaval. They believe some may have been hidden by merchants along trade routes, while others were stashed in haste during conflict. Many were never reclaimed, leaving modern archaeologists to piece together the circumstances from the objects and their locations.

Any detectorist would love to find a hoard, and hoards receive a lot of attention.  The contents of hoards are studied, but not a lot of attention is paid to how or why the hoards are accumulated.  

Before a hoard becomes a hoard it was first a collection. Some were put together carefully and systematically while others were assembled with little or no thought given to what should be included.

We often think of hoards as being buried for later retrieval but for some reason was never recovered.  It could have simply been forgotten, or disability or death prevented its recovery, or maybe the precise location wasn't easy to find after time passed. 

You might think you can go back and easily find something you buried, but that isn't always the case.  Memories fade and even when they don't, things inevitably change.  

The beaches of the Treasure Coast have changed a lot over the years.  Many landmarks that I used in the past to identify locations have completely disappeared.   Many landmarks were washed away by hurricanes.  Invasive species of trees were removed.  There can be new construction.  And the renourishment projects cover old landmarks and change the look of the beach. 

The same thing goes for the Indian River lagoon.  The changes are remarkable.  Things look entirely different today.  Over the past ten, twenty or thirty years, many landmarks disappeared shoreline was reshaped by storms and men.  Old docks were washed away and others were built in different locations.

Back to the beach, I've found items that were lost by beach goers after they buried them for safety while the took a dip.  Several times it was keys.  One time a wallet was buried with keys. The beach goers thought they would be able to return and easily uncover the buried objects that they buried just minutes earlier, but it wasn't that easy.  They knew the general area, and I was easily able to find their items with my metal detector.  But they thought they would just return and uncover the items.

But there are other reasons that hoards are sometimes not recovered. There are some items that were actually not meant to be recovered.  Here is a weird one for you.  I've actually considered someday reburying finds for other people to find.  Instead of giving the items to someone outright, they could be left for whoever might find them.  That way I'd pass along more than the object.  I'd also pass on the fun of the discovery.  That seems like an especially good choice for items that might not yet be worth a fortune but have a good chance of becoming more valuable with the passing of time.

Of course, there are hoards that were buried for commercial purposes such as those associated with a book that provides clues.  There have been several of those.  I don't know that all of them have been recovered, and I don't know how many there were.  There could be some out there that have not be recovered yet.

You have to wonder about the supposed treasure of Oak Island.  If it exists at all, was it meant to be recovered?  

I found an academic study that suggested studying how hoards were put together as collections before being buried.  Below is an excerpt from the study to give you the idea of that article.

If hoards were buried for safekeeping and later retrieval as some have argued, they were unintentional, but then why were so many hoards never recovered (Fontijn 2002, 14) and why are patterns in their contents and location of deposition observed? If, on the other hand, hoards were deliberate deposits, as most would now argue, what was the explanation? Were they all votive deposits or was there also an economic motivation in some instances? Another concern has been to explore how hoards differ from other types of deposit that are intentional, such as objects from watery contexts (Bradley 1998; Fitzpatrick 1984). Interpretations continue to be developed and refined. Research over the past thirty years, for example on Bronze Age hoards from continental Europe, has concentrated on identifying recurring patterns, such as looking at the arrangement of objects in hoards or details of fragmentation and use-wear, to identify local and regional artefact traditions and patterns of deposition (Dietrich 2014, 468–70; Hansen 2013, 179–80). Long-standing assumptions have also been interrogated. For example, Yates and Bradley (2010) have called into question the differences between watery and dry-land deposits and Bradley (2013) has cast doubt on the distinction between hoards and single finds. Particularly revealing are studies uncovering how our own cultural biases have dictated how we have interpreted hoards. For instance, the term ritual is often used to describe a practice like hoarding, which to our eyes defies functional or common-sense explanation (Bradley 2005, xiii)...

There have been religious, superstitious or ritual depositions.  Those deposits might be meant to solicit an effect or as an act of thanksgiving and not to be recovered.

A votive offering or votive deposit are objects that were deposited without the intention of recovery.  They were buried in a sacred place. 

There are times when items are buried to simply get rid of them.  Other than what is junk, some item could be thought to be bad luck or associated with some past guilt-producing act.  They are associated with bad karma.  

Think of the wedding rings that were thrown away in anger.  I'm don't doubt that happens.

Here is another excerpt from the study.

 Assuming collections of artefacts existed in prehistory prior to some being deposited as hoards, they may have been liminal phenomena, in effect keeping objects in stasis until a sufficient number had been gathered for their final deposition in a hoard. Alternatively, they could have been quite dynamic, with collections being added to and other objects removed through processes of swapping and exchange (Wingfield 2011). We also do not know how private these collections were, who had access to them and when. They may have been openly displayed, stored in containers, hidden away in dwellings or even in holes in the ground. Collections became static or fixed as ‘hoards’ only because no one retrieved the objects after deposition (Needham 2001, 2007). For the purposes of this article, whatever the social mechanisms behind this were, whether intentional or otherwise, hoards are viewed as ‘snapshots’ or ‘time traps’ of the networks of people, places and things that formed these collections (Garrow and Gosden 2012, 156; see also Wingfield 2013, 80). They are also seen as a window on collections that may have existed in prehistoric societies but are made visible only through hoarding. Approaching hoards as collection

I'll leave you with that for today.  It will lead me to another topic that I have planned for another day.

just another time.  

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We're back to the hot weather and one to two foot surf today.

Good hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net